How to Replace the Shaft and Bearings on a Tumble Dryer

In this video I’m going to show you how to fit a new drum shaft to this Indesit vented tumble dryer. Now the process is pretty much the same if you’ve got the condenser equivalent and, indeed, this video should be useful to you if you are fitting a new drum shaft to any model of tumble dryer.

Now the drum shaft, that fits at the back of the drum, on the outside. On this one it’s held in place by these three screws.

The shaft goes through the back of the appliance, where it sits in a bearing like this, and the bearing is attached to the back panel. That just allows the whole drum to spin round nicely. Now if your drum shaft has gone, apart from making a nasty noise, you’ll be able to tell because the whole drum will be moving around inside the cavity. You can see on this one the drum shaft is fine and there is just no movement there at all. But if yours is moving around all over the place and is making a dreadful noise, then you are going to need to fit a new drum shaft.

You’ll often be able to get a drum shaft kit like this. In addition to the drum shaft it has bearings, screws and washers, these bearing pads, and seals which we’re also going to be replacing. Now it’s worth mentioning that if there is any damage to the drum itself, you can just buy a replacement drum. On this one it has the shaft pre-attached, so you wouldn’t need to get that separately.

Now just a quick word about safety, do make sure that you are unplugged from the mains before you do any work on any electrical appliance. Now I’m going to start by laying this dryer down on its front, so to avoid any damage to the door the first thing I’m going to do is take the door off. So with the door off, I can tilt the whole thing onto its front.

So with the machine on its front I’m now going to need to take off this top panel, this right hand side panel, and the whole of the back panel. I’m going to start by taking off this air vent, there is just one Phillips screw holding it in place.

On this model everything is held in place with Phillips head screws, it’s just a case of working around and undoing them all.

So there, with the side panel off we can start work on the back panel. I’m going to start by removing this vent tube, and then we just need to remove this bearing cover and the heater. Again it’s just all Phillips-head screws.

So that’s the heater element there. If we just un-couple the power cable to the heater, then we can put that away to one side and now we just need to take this fan off, this is just an 8mm socket. So with the screws undone I just need to disconnect these wires. Before I do I’m just going to get my camera on my phone and just take a couple of photos, just to remind me of how it was all wired in. Just so I don’t make any mistakes when it comes to wiring it all back in again.

So now the only thing holding the back panel in place is the shaft itself and that’s secured by this shaft collar, with this pin going through the end of the shaft. So I’m going to remove the pin. Now my kit doesn’t include a shaft collar, so I need to make sure I keep this one safe and re-use it, when I put the new shaft on. So that’s the pin out, and the shaft collar will just slide off.

Now I’m also going to remove the bearing because my kit does come with a bearing, and I’m going to replace that.

So now I can finally take the back panel off. I’ve just had to loosen the left hand panel as well, take a couple of screws out of that. That means I should be able to slide that across, and the back panel should lift completely away.

So you can see the 3 screws that are holding the shaft to the drum. I’m just going to remove the belt. Just pull that down and spin that around. Just watch your fingers make sure you don’t get them caught in the motor pulley, and then you can see that the drum just then comes completely away.

So I’ve just got the drum itself on the table so I’ve got plenty of room and I can undo these screws from the inside. Now these are torx-head screws, I’m using a torx head bit on a driver here. There we go, that’s the old shaft away. If you’ve not got any torx-head bits for a driver you can get a set of torx keys from the eSpares website – and I just need to put the new shaft back in place.

OK so now it’s time to fit the new bearing to the back panel. Now the one that came off this one is a tear drop shaped one. The kit may well come with a square one like this for different models, but I don’t need that one. So that just drops into place and the holding screw goes back in.

OK now if I flip the back panel over, what I’m also going to do is take off this old seal and fit with a brand new one. This one is all stuck to the back panel so I’m just using a, well, this actually an oven scraper, just to get that old adhesive off there. OK so that’s the worst of the old seal and the adhesive out of the way. I can just now put the new one in place. Just check that’s the right size. What we’ve got to do is just take off the backing strip, all the way round, and just make sure when you’re putting it on, you just place it carefully so that it’s on the outside of that lip all the way round.

So the final things for me to replace are these bearing pads, there are four of them on here, and the seal that goes right the way round the outside.

Now the bearing pads should just clip out. So with the bearing pads out of the way we now just need to take the old seal off, and like the seal on the back panel, it’s going to leave quite a bit of the old felt and adhesive on the edge there, which we’ll need to go round and scrape off. Actually, that’s coming away quite nicely, we might be able to get away without any scraping. Ohh lovely!

So I’m just putting the seal in place. I’ve left the backing tape on just for a second. You should have a groove in one side and all we are going to do is just tuck the loose ends in one side just like that. Once you’ve got it in the position you want it, we can start taking the backing tape off and sticking it down, as we go, just working our way round.

There we go that’s the seal in place. That’s all good, quite happy with that. Now I just need to put my new bearing pads in, and they just click into place, like so. OK, so that’s great. All I need to do now is put everything back together, and I’ll start with this left hand side panel.

Now before I put the back panel on I’m just going to put that washer over the shaft.

So you remember the shaft collar that we saved from earlier, I can now just pop that in place and get the new pin that came in the pack, and put that there. And with a pair of pliers, I’m just going to bend the straight end around just to make an ‘S’ shape. There we go.